Neither a pastor nor raised in the church, my apologetics turned the stomachs of some hardcore atheists. I did not know then what gave me my power. The desperate hope of mankind to find meaning, purpose, and value -- in the world -- in themselves.

It didn’t occur to me that they were responding to the bold display of love and vulnerability because that spirit is attractive. Who doesn’t want to be loved? Who wouldn’t want to be saved? Who doesn’t want to find purpose?

But like Neo in the Matrix, there was a splinter in my mind. There was something wrong with the world. It did not match my view.

Perhaps the question that was most damaging to me was: “Do I want to live forever?” No, I do not. Truthfully, oblivion sounds like a very merciful end to life. No consciousness, or pain, or haunts, or ills. No remorse or regrets. Just deep sleep -- ultimate rest. Blacked like the end of every film.

Removing the lie is like removing a virus from my hard drive.Life gives us a vary short spotlight. Did I really want to be known as a man promoting a god that never truly manifested himself to me? I don’t mean in spirit or feelings. I mean in pillars of fire, or splitting the sea. I was proclaiming the truth of a man I never met from two thousand years ago when I don’t even know my great grand dad’s name.

It truly is a bazaar thing named religion. I realized the story never mattered to me. It was the spirit of the people I held dear.

Removing the lie is like removing a virus from my hard drive. How do I go about it without damaging files important to my ability to network with others? How can I go through life without being Norton Antivirus? People do not want to hear that they are infected, and I don’t want to spoil their icecream. I must learn restrain the persuader in me.

On Wednesday, the victim’s mother stood in an Auburn courtroom to describe the pain and damage Waisner has caused her family.

The mother, whose name is withheld to protect the minor victim’s identity, said that Waisner sent her daughter more than 4,000 text messages in one month. She said many of the messages were sexually explicit.

Speaking through tears, the victim’s mother said Waisner convinced her daughter to sneak out of the family’s Rocklin home and go with him on a trip to San Francisco.

She added that Waisner told her daughter he would leave his wife and three children to be with the teen and that he loved her.

“He has caused her emotional damage that will last a lifetime,” the mother said.

When Judge Robert McElhany asked if Waisner would like to say anything, the defendant declined to speak in the courtroom.

Earlier in the proceedings, public defender John Lyman argued for a motion to continue the sentencing. He said Waisner’s wife had filed a restraining order against the victim on behalf of their family and they needed time to attend the hearing. McElhany denied the motion.

Prosecutor Todd Kuhnen said in court that a mandated reporter referred the case to the District Attorney’s Office but did not say who or from where.

Lincoln Police arrested Waisner in September. In February, he pleaded no contest to the charge of lewd and lascivious acts with a child. He will serve three years on parole after he is released and was ordered to pay $200 in restitution. Waisner must also register as a sex offender.

Outside of the courtroom Garland Bell, a Granite Bay attorney representing the victim’s family, said the relationship between the victim and Waisner lasted about six months and that the two had sex “many times.”

Bell said the family has hired him to look into the possibility of a civil lawsuit against Waisner and the church. No lawsuit had been filed as of Wednesday.

“He was a youth pastor at Wednesday night programs,” Bell said. “It was advertised as a very safe place to be.”

I've gotten this a number of times, and I've seen Christians do it to other apostates as well. It's always puzzled me. After all, I am the person who has lived my own life, not anyone else. It would stand to reason that, living in my own skin and my own head, I understand my motivations, feelings, experiences, and so on better than anyone else possibly could. I have never understood how anyone could be so unabashedly arrogant as to presume to know me better than I do. It simply isn't possible.

So I've had a difficult time understanding how any Christian could insist that they "know the real reason" why I left, in contradiction to my actual reasons. What's particularly mindboggling is to hear a believer assert my motivations without actually hearing anything about me or my story beforehand! I've found myself wondering, "Why don't they just ask me, if they really want to know what happened?? And why don't they seem to believe me, when I do tell them??"

The answer, I suspect, is simple. Christians don't ask apostates why we left, because they don't need to. The Bible already tells them.

Check out 2 Peter 2 for a Biblical description of apostates, paying special attention to verses 20 and 21. By this account, apostates are utterly depraved, shameful, wicked, arrogant beasts deserving of a punishment worse than if we had never been believers in the first place. By this account, we leave because we want to tempt believers and live self-absorbed lives of sin. John 3:19 puts it more simply: we leave because we prefer evil. Psalm 14:1 adds that we are fools whose deeds are corrupt and vile. Romans 1:18-32 offers further details of what kind of degeneracy apostates will descend into.

Regardless of whether or not we fall into another religion, or lapse into full-blown godlessness, the Bible tells Christians that apostates leave because we want to live lives of sin. It tells them that we chose to live sinful lives, and that we want to tempt true believers into the same godless depravity in which we live.

It isn't true, of course: the actual reasons why apostates leave the faith are many and varied. Our leaving isn't always entirely under our control, and it isn't always a conscious choice or matter of will. And we don't generally become slavering moral degenerates, either. When it comes to apostasy, the Bible does not describe reality at all.

But for a devout, Bible-believing Christian, the Bible trumps reality.

To a Bible-believing Christian, the Bible is more than simply a book of interesting stories. It's a work dictated by God, even if God wasn't holding the pen. The Bible isn't God, but it contains God's alleged opinions, mandates, laws, and wishes for humanity. So if the Bible claims that apostates are degenerates choosing to live sinful lives, it's as good as if God said so. The Bible is the Truth with a capital T, sterling, unchanging, and undeniable, to a devout believer.

And if you believe in Truth, why let a pesky little thing like reality get in your way?

Stephen Baldwin has every right to pursue a career in Hollywood or Christian ministry or both. What seems amazing to me, however, is that any Christians would believe that a very wealthy actor has gone bankrupt and lost his house, not because of poor choices he's made, but because he's a modern-day Job. That's right, Baldwin has fallen on hard times because of his religious convictions! At least that's the claim being made on the website RestoreStephenBaldwin.org.

When I heard about this, (thanks Aaron!), I was like "What the heck is this all about?" Fortunately the site has a peachy keen Q&A to answer some of my anticipated questions:

Q- Why doesn't his family help him?
A- His family does not perceive Stephen’s predicament as a matter of spiritual warfare. They see Stephen’s outspoken Christianity as poor choices therefore they will not help.

Really? Baldwin had no involvement in a decision made by his own ministry? Huh?

Look, I have no complaint with celebrities making money and/or becoming ministers. But when a fairly successful movie actor goes belly up and loses his million-dollar house, it probably means the guy made more than a few poor money decisions. My guess is that he was living way beyond his means. Most of us can't even comprehend the financial lifestyle lesser known Hollywood celebrities enjoy. Is this guy so self-absorbed that he thinks anyone should feel bad for him?

Also from the Q&A on the website:

Q- Why does Stephen need personal wealth?
A- Stephen’s influence is in Hollywood. Hollywood worships money and without it you are seen as a loser and cannot be an effective influence to this group.

I wonder what the peasant Jesus (if he ever actually existed) would have thought about that explanation?

Michael Louis Anthony reported himself to Kelso police April 13 and was booked into jail Friday. He was held Tuesday on $150,000 bail in the Cowlitz County Jail on suspicion of third-degree child molestation, third-degree rape of a child and second-degree sexual misconduct with a minor.

Police said Anthony, who is married and has two children, served as the girl's "spiritual teacher, counselor and confidant." The girl, who was 15 when the sex began, and Anthony told police they had sex too many times to count and that they did so in churches, Anthony's Kelso home, Gerhart Gardens Park and other places.

During a routine patrol, Longview police officer Ken Hardy found Anthony and the girl inside a van parked at Gerhart Gardens on Feb. 25, the police report said. Anthony's shirt was off and the girl's shirt was "half way up," but Hardy "could not determine (whether) a crime occurred," the report said.

The girl told Hardy that Anthony was her youth pastor, the police report said. Hardy contacted Calvary Chapel pastor Al Fredrich, who said he fired Anthony in September at the request of Anthony's wife, the report said. Police said Anthony's wife wanted him to quit working at the church "so he could work on his marriage."

Police said Fredrich met with Anthony April 11. Anthony admitted during the meeting to having sex with the girl, the report said. Fredrich, who described himself as Anthony's friend, threatened to tell the police if Anthony didn't confess to authorities.

Fredrich declined to comment on the situation Tuesday, saying Anthony "hasn't been to our church in, like, seven months."

"This whole thing is hard," he said. "We're trying to put together a hurting family right now."
Asked whether he was talking about Anthony's family or the victims' family, Fredrich said he was referring to both.

Anthony and the victim both told police the sex was consensual. Anthony told investigators the girl's parents "were aware of the relationship and to his knowledge they had not reported it to the police," according to the police report.

Anthony's resume on LinkedIn.com, a social network for professionals, said he served as Calvary Chapel's youth pastor from August 2006 to September. His job, according to the online profile, was to "prepare lessons and sermons, supervise and mentor adolescents and teens and counsel families."
He served as Youth Services Director of the Flying H Youth Ranch in Naches, Wash., from May 2003 to July 2006, the resume said. Before that, he worked for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and served in the Army National Guard.

Anthony told police he first kissed the girl in October 2008 as she helped him pack to move from a church parsonage in rural Rainier to a home in the 600 block of fourth Avenue in North Kelso.

Anthony said the girl first initiated intercourse with him inside the Delena Baptist Church, Rainier, where Calvary Chapel had been offering youth programs. They had sex again a month later when the girl came to his home to visit his daughter, the report said.

He said he recently told his family and friends about his conduct and "felt the need to confess to law enforcement" as well, the report said. Anthony told police he was aware of the girl's age because of his duties as youth pastor.

Having grown up as the youngest son of a Christian minister, first in the Baptist denomination, then into Pentecostal and Non-Denominational Churches (part of the Charismatic movement for the most part), I was heavily indoctrinated in Protestant Christianity from a very young age (since birth really).

From my earliest memories, I was in church every time the doors were opened (mainly because my father usually was the one who opened them). For much of my early childhood, we even had a family bible study every single weeknight. As a result, I have a very strong understanding and knowledge of this religion, and it's sacred writings.

Another effect of this style of upraising is that I have undergone a long, painful, arduous journey escaping what I now think of as the brainwashing that I was subjected to for more than half of my life. To this day, I still have not escaped all of the effects of this time in my life. After all, it was perpetrated at the most developmentally important part of my growth. My natural bend to intellectualism was discouraged and stunted, because it does not fit with the practice of blind faith. My kneejerk sense of morality, which has both negative and positive aspects, does not always correspond with a realistic purview of ethical behavior. Despite my initial liberation from irrational beliefs, I still pay a penalty for the brainwashing I endured in these, and many other different ways. I am progressing daily. But, it seems such an unnecessary struggle should have been avoided.

The steps of Brainwashing:

Assault on identity

Guilt

Self-betrayal

Breaking point

Leniency

Compulsion to confess

Channeling of guilt

Releasing of guilt

Progress and harmony

Final confession and rebirth

Why do I think of this as brainwashing? Let's consider the definition of brainwashing (according to Oxford American Dictionary): make (someone) adopt radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible pressure.

1. The first step to brainwashing is to attack the subject's sense of self, or identity. Since a child is developing his/her sense of self within the context of the religious teachings, this step is fulfilled by default, as there is no prior sense of self to overcome.

2. Christianity is built upon the concept of guilt. We sinful creatures must be redeemed from the sinful nature we inherited, that was passed down through the generations from Adam and Eve. So, the second step, which is guilt is obviously fulfilled.

3. Attending church, listening to the songs, the sermon, and just the casual conversation of the congregation, constantly reinforces to the child how guilty everyone including the child him/her self are. This fulfills the step of self betrayal by convincing the child of his/her own lack of intrinsic worth. The child is forced to admit this, at least inside, if not to others. Ultimately, this step is about internalizing the guilt that is hammered down in step 2.

4. This leads to the point where the child wonders what he/she, the wretched sinful creature can possibly do about his/her dismal state. Obviously, there is nothing that he/she as an inherently evil creature can do. This is the point where God and Jesus come in. They are willing to forgive you, and give you a new life, one without the sinful nature that makes you so evil. The child is worn down to the point of relinquishing his/her control of self, the breaking point. I clearly remember spending many sleepless nights at the tender age of 8 crying out to God to save me. I was terrified of going to hell. It was much worse than any horror movie, or any other source of fear that I had felt before or since that time. It is a very powerful motivator to embrace the teachings of Christianity. To this day, I still have a deep fear of going to hell, even though I no longer even believe in such a place.

5. The step of leniency is fulfilled by the grace and mercy that God exhibits by giving the child a chance at salvation, simply by believing that Jesus died as a sacrifice to redeem him/her from his/her wretched sinful nature. He/She can now go to heaven, because she/he believes. Isn't God good to help that child. Isn't He showing leniency to such an unworthy creature.

6-10. To save time and space, I won't belabor the obvious. I think that you get the gist of what I am saying here. For these reasons, I will summarize the rest of the steps in one short paragraph. The child is encouraged to confess his/her sins often, at various times, in various ways. The pain that is associated with the guilt is attributed to the "world" as opposed to the "things of God" or the "Kingdom of Heaven". This encourages the child to avoid the "evil" things of the "world". After the conversion experience, it is the world that is blamed for the evil that may occasionally overtake the child. To remedy this, the child is encouraged to avoid the world. It is by renewing his/her mind in the Word of God that he/she insulates him/her self from the world, and the attendant guilt. This renewing and dedication to the things of God are put forth as providing the peace and harmony that has been denied the child through the aforementioned mechanisms. This, in turn, provides a sense of comfort and a cessation of a sense of responsibility within the child, as long as he/she continues to live in the prescribed way.

Considering that nearly every one of these steps can take place in a single church service, and that many children go through thousands of these services in their lifetimes, one can easily see the erosive power of such a mechanism on a person's will, especially as the personality, will, emotions, virtually every aspect that we think of as representing the very humanness of humanity, is yet to be formed. I have often thought that continuing to teach something that has already been learned ad nauseam must be a form or step of brainwashing. In what other aspect of life is this sort of instruction used, and considered normal?

The alert reader may wonder how the definition's statement of adopting radically different beliefs is fulfilled. Well, I'm glad you asked. Part of what led to my eventual deconversion was my noticing the fact that many of the most important claims made in the Bible are of a supernatural nature. Though I have spoken with a few people who claim direct exposure to what they consider to be supernatural events, I have not witnessed nor heard of any experience or phenomena that could not either be explained using natural means, or reasonably doubted (most often because of humanity's notoriously untrustworthy mechanisms of perception). This has lead me to ask the question, both of myself and others: What in our daily experiences supports the idea of the supernatural phenomena reported in the bible? Is there any reason or evidence that shows that such claims are truly possible/probable. These beliefs that we are expected to hold in Christianity really are radically different from our personal experiences of the natural world. What reason, other than the teaching (brainwashing), and widespread acceptance of such beliefs, do we have to believe these truly incredible claims?

I encourage you to ask yourself these question: Have I been brainwashed? Why do I believe what I believe? If I had been born in another place at another time, how might my beliefs be different? I asked myself these questions as a young adult. The honest answers I gave myself made an amazing liberating change in me, that I really would like to share with others. All I ask is that you take the advice of the inscription over the entryway of the ancient Greek temple at Delphi "Know Yourself". In other words, have the courage to be honest with yourself, the courage to answer these questions forthrightly and honestly.

It's hard for me to believe there is a god that cares so much about me because my life has always been one of intense problems. It has not stopped.

Just recently I tried to go back to Christianity and get a deliverance prayer done on me which I did, and I didn't feel any difference. I actually felt worse. I felt like I wanted to sin more and I didn't feel it working inside of me.

I have this rage for god and this rage for myself because I don't know if it is me not believing or it's just not working on me.

After being upset from the deliverance not working, I would rather leave Christianity for good. For the last 6 years I have been back and forth leaving Christianity and coming back to it. But I think that I am tired of going back and forth. I think that I am just going to stay agnostic.

The only time I really know that god helped me was when I almost died 4 times in my life. Thats the only time I think he was really there.

I don't understand. He knows I'm suffering down here. Why don't he just let me be killed and not protect me anymore. Its like he wants me to suffer on this earth and not die.

SALT LAKE CITY — A former Salt Lake City pastor who exposed himself over the Internet to someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl was sentenced to 90 days in jail Monday.

William J. Blanscet, 67, pleaded guilty in January to two counts of dealing harmful materials to a minor, a third-degree felony. Monday, his attorneys told Third District Judge Robin Reese they had "never seen anyone punish himself the way he has" before asking the judge for a 90-day sentence.

Reese instead sentenced Blanscet to zero to five years in prison but suspended the prison time and ordered Blanscet to serve 90 days in jail followed by three years of probation. The judge also ordered him to not use the Internet — for any reason.

Blanscet was a pastor at the Church of God of Prophecy at 425 N. 700 West in Salt Lake City — and had been for more than 40 years, prosecutors said. But on May 14, he resigned and had his bishop's license revoked, according to a spokesman for the church.

One week later, Blanscet was charged with four counts of dealing in harmful material to a minor, all third-degree felonies.

Police said he exposed himself on multiple occasions using a Webcam to a person he thought was a 13-year-old girl.

The first instance was in July 2008, when Blanscet, under the username "happyutahman," contacted an investigator with the Attorney General's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force posing as a 13-year-old girl. He contacted the "girl" in a chat room multiple times over the course of several months.

On four different occasions Blanscet used his Webcam to expose his genitals — including two instances where he transmitted images from a local hospital where his wife had just undergone knee surgery, court documents state.

Blanscet's wife was in the courtroom Monday and Blanscet's attorney, Greg Skordas, cited the man's family as a reason to give Blanscet an abbreviated sentence.

"This has been tough on Bill and his family," Skordas said. "His wife is present and remains supportive and his family remains supportive of him. He's frail. I've never seen someone punish himself the way he has. ... He is a very good man."

But state prosecutor Paul Amann said the case was "particularly egregious" and warranted a sentence of at least 180 days.

"It's not just that he was doing this while a gentleman of a certain age who should have known better, but he was the pastor of the church and had been for more than 42 years," Amann said. "He should have turned to something other than what he was doing on the Internet."

Blanscet and his family declined to comment after the sentencing. He is to report to jail April 27.

I’ve recently been reading up on a couple of modern theological writers, Karen Armstrong and David B. Hart. It’s been fun, but not particularly enlightening. Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who wrote “A History of God” and several other books.

These writers (especially Hart) have criticized the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, et. al.) for being superficial, irrelevant, a passing fad, and nearly everything else but right. The gist of their thinking on the existence of god can be found in a N.Y. Times essay by Armstrong (1), and Hart’s essay, “Believe It or Not” (2), on the First Things web site. Hart’s essay is particularly corrosive as he chides the New Atheists with all the warmth and charm of battery acid.

These writers are so confoundingly abstract that understanding what they call god is a lot like trying to catch fog in a butterfly net, or likening the taste of a mushroom to a C-sharp chord. Their main skill appears to be obfuscation, which, of course, may work quite well with the intellectually insecure. Most of the rest of us, however, will legitimately wonder if they know what they’re talking about any more than we do.

Doubtless, part (and parcel?) of the game here is to define their god in such a way that it bears no resemblance to the god of the Bible, and is so ethereal and ineffable as to make it virtually impossible to argue against its existence (yet their arguments sometimes make their gods look an awful lot like nature). It makes me think of a rainbow, where much can be said about the colors in it, their order of appearance top to bottom, the degrees of arc they transit, the existence of double rainbows, etc., when, in fact, a rainbow is merely an illusion. It is composed of nothing but water droplets and light which make an image that appears slightly different to each observer. What is often lost sight of (if you’ll pardon the pun) is the fact that there really is no object out there in the sky; if no observer, no rainbow. Now, in some ways, that sounds to me a lot like god; there’s lots of talk, but no observer, and no god.

Here’s David Hart’s god:

“The most venerable metaphysical claims about God… start, rather, from the fairly elementary observation that nothing contingent, composite, finite, temporal, complex, and mutable can account for its own existence, and that even an infinite series of such things can never be the source or ground of its own being, but must depend on some source of actuality beyond itself. Thus, abstracting from the universal conditions of contingency, one very well may (and perhaps must) conclude that all things are sustained in being by an absolute plenitude of actuality, whose very essence is being as such: not a “supreme being,” not another thing within or alongside the universe, but the infinite act of being itself, the one eternal and transcendent source of all existence and knowledge, in which all finite being participates.”(2)

Now, I could be wrong, because there are a lot of very slippery words there, but it appears to me that he is saying that god is “being;” not “a being,” just “being.” How this definition is of any use to anyone, however, escapes me. Well, there is this, if I believed god is being, then I would have to agree that god exists, because I surely be. Can’t you just picture Mr. Hart praying? “Dear Absolute Plenitude of Actuality, give us this day…”

Ah, but perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe this will help clear things up. “But such reasoning is also certainly not subject to the objection from infinite regress. It is not logically requisite for anyone, on observing that contingent reality must depend on absolute reality, to say then what the absolute depends on or, on asserting the participation of finite beings in infinite being, further to explain what it is that makes being to be.” Or maybe not…

A question which occurs to me is this: if god is “being,” the whole of being and nothing but being, then why do we even need the word “god?” What’s wrong with simply using the word “being” to describe being? And, can “being” really have any meaning by itself, without reference to a particular thing? I mean, how can “being” just be, without being anything – if you catch my drift. Am I unfair in suggesting that perhaps Mr. Hart has fallen back to a position of defining god as “being” just so he has something to call god? Could it be that Mr. Hart doesn’t believe in supernatural gods any more than I do?

What good does this god do anyone if all it does is be? There is no hint in Hart’s explanation that this god interacts with humans at all. Of course, Hart’s god would have no more meaning to the average Christian than a third derivative or a charmed quark.

And yet, it seems Hart may be a fairly traditional Christian. In a recent interview (3), Hart says:

"For Christians, one must look to the cross of Christ to take the measure of God’s love, and of its worth in comparison to the sufferings of a fallen world. And one must look to the risen Christ to grasp the glory for which we are intended, and take one’s understanding of the majesty and tragedy of creation’s freedom from that."

So, this god which in one place is merely “being,” in another place is capable of love. And he clearly believes in the resurrection. From my perspective, this guy is seriously confused. He doesn’t appear to know what he believes.

It is no wonder Hart is unimpressed by the “New Atheists.” They aren’t talking about his god, and I suspect very few people are, except him. Can you spell sophistry?

Now, here’s Karen Armstrong’s god:

“Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped - even primitive. In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.” (1) (Well isn’t that what you thought when you read the Bible?)

Notice the key phrase here, “God …whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited.” Well that’s it then. Roll up the tents and saddle the camels, we rationalists are out of the game, by fiat. The Four Horsemen have wasted their time. God, then, is merely a symbol which points to something else which is intuited by means of spiritual exercises. Could “spiritual exercises” be something like “wishing,” do you think? Again, there can be precious few other Christians in the world (who haven’t read Armstrong) who would define their god this way. Can you spell sophistry yet?

As far as I can tell, Hart’s god is “the absolute plenitude of actuality,” or simply “being,” while Armstrong’s god is a symbol that points (to an “indescribable transcendence”). Now, think about this: are they talking about the same god? Is there any overlap at all? Don’t worry; those questions won’t be on the exam, because I don’t know either.

Is it any wonder the New Atheists are found wanting by theologians like Armstrong and Hart? Their definitions of god bear absolutely no resemblance to the god of the Bible, the one preached about in churches, and the one 99% of today’s Christians say they worship (there’s no resemblance to Allah either, or any other god with a name). Why on earth would Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens bother with these conceptions of god (if they were even aware of them) which hardly anyone but their authors recognize? It appears to me that Armstrong, Hart and their compatriots are merely self-important, fringe elements who deserve no more attention than Pat Robertson, but for different reasons. Can you spell irrelevant?

On my Blog called "apriori blues" I include a series called "Our Daily Brood". I'm a graduate of Wheaton College's Ancient Languages Department, and I was trained to read and interpret the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. Hence the fact that I am now an Ex-Christian. The following article is one of my Daily Brood posts, regarding the Gospels and common (and intentionally enforced) misconceptions about them.

As a student of the Bible, one of my pet peeves is the literature that has cropped up around the notion that the Gospels are biographies of a man named Jesus. The conventional wisdom goes that, like biographies or even memoirs (since the belief in the doctrine of Inspiration requires that one essentially believe that God somehow wrote the Bible using human agents), that the gospels offer us a fairly accurate, if not entirely, literally, historically, chronologically accurate portrayal of the Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. One of the worst culprits, and therefore one of the most popular books on the subject, is the complete and utter fabrication proffered by Lee Strobel, in his book The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. This book has sold millions of copies and has been used time and again to prop up the damnable lie that the Gospels are biographical accounts of the life of a man named Jesus, who also happened to be YHWH in the flesh. So, leaving aside that fact that Pastor Strobel, who was a Pastor at the well known Willow Creek mega church for 20 years or more before he wrote his "Journalistic Investigation", so he can't really claim to be a journalist any more than I can claim to be a "Pastor" which is what I might have been called in a former life, and ignoring the fact that even when he was a journalist he only wrote about fundamentalist Christianity in his articles in the Tribune (as far as I can tell), and also leaving aside the fact that his journalistic account of the "evidence" only included interviews with well-known, fundamentalist Apologists, without a single interview with anyone who might even hint at an understanding of the Gospels other than his cherished Biography myth, so leaving aside all of this and the fact that even the premise for his investigation is a complete and utter lie, even in its title, let's take a look at whether or not the Gospels can be considered Biographies in any meaningful sense of the word.

For brevity's sake, I'll skip over the myriad technicalities and preparatory remarks that can and should be established about the nature of the Canonical Gospels, which are themselves only four out of hundreds of Gospels produced by the various Christian sects (who continued to write Gospels for a thousand years or more after the death of Christ, which alone should be enough to establish the fact that it's not possible to call them "biographies"), and I'll get right to the text of the Gospels themselves. In particular I want to focus on a cycle of stories about Jesus as it's presented in the Gospel of Mark, which is, by almost a unanimous consensus among scholars, the oldest of the Canonical Gospels, and is the basis of parts of both Luke and Matthew. To begin, it should be evident to anyone even moderately acquainted with the Gospels, that much of the material found therein is based on Old Testament themes and passages. To the modern reader, this fact is often used as "evidence" that Jesus life and ministry was a fulfillment of Old Testament "prophecy". OK, I'm willing to grant that it's possible to take that line, rather than the more obvious, rational, and typical explanation for ancient literature, which would be that the author of the Gospel was taking what he knew about the Old Testament and re-casting it into a myth set in his contemporary milieu. After all, books that used just this literary technique were ubiquitous in first century Judaism, so why should the Gospels be any different, right? But, even if we grant that the various allusions and quotations from the Old Testament that are peppered throughout the gospel stories are just sidebars about how Jesus fulfilled "prophecy", at the very least we should have a consensus about the fact that the Old Testament is the skeleton on which the Gospels are fleshed out (no pun intended). That being the case, it should come as no surprise when I offer up the next little tid-bit about Gospel construction as it occurs in Mark.

The entire Gospel of Mark is written around a pre-existing framework, taken from the Old Testament. That much is indisputable. At his Baptism, Jesus is confirmed as the "Son" as the heavens are "rent" (or torn asunder, σχιζομενους in Greek, v. 1:10) and the Spirit comes down to rest on Him. At his death, as Jesus "expires", the Spirit leaves him (our word "expires" is just a literal translation of the Greek εξεπνευσεν, literally put that Jesus "out-spirited" or "un-spirited", as the Spirit came out of him, Mk. 15:37), and just as this happens the Veil in the Temple (which is figurative for the Heavens) is "rent" (or torn asunder, εσχισθη), which leads the Centurion to declare that Jesus was the Son of God. So, the Gospel is all wrapped up in a nice, tidy little package, bookended by the literal heavens being rent, the Spirit coming down, and God pronouncing that Jesus is His Son, then at the end you get the Spirit going up, the figurative heavens being rent, and the Roman pronouncing that Jesus is God's Son (of course because the Romans were the target audience for the Gospel message). All of this is hung on the framework of Isaiah 64:1 "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down", which of course uses the same verb in Greek that is used of both the literal and figurative "heavens", as the sky and the veil are "rent" or torn. This is indisputable, and Mark's construction of his Gospel around a pre-existing framework doesn't end there. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a story or an episode in the entire Gospel that isn't using this same technique, re-casting an Old Testament quote or narrative into the Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Is this the stuff of biography? Surely not. Still unconvinced? Let's look further...

Long about Mark chapter 4, just after Mark has finished copying and pasting some of his favorite Jesus sayings into the pre-existing framework for his Gospel narrative, he begins a cycle of stories about the miracles and deeds of Jesus. One of the hallmarks of Jesus' ministry is the notion that he was a do-gooder, traveling around Palestine, healing the sick and generally just helping out whenever he encountered people who needed a hand. This, after all, is a part of his "biography", and a biographer would be remiss if he failed to mention the details of a person's career, right? Well, as we've already seen, Mark isn't writing a biography. In fact, what he's writing isn't even something that he is "writing"--it's something he's re-writing--he is taking the Old Testament and re-writing it as though it were happening again, only this time the whole Old Testament is wrapped up into the person of Jesus, in a three-year career of recapitulating the entire history of Israel. This is popularly known as the "fulfillment of prophecy", though in other circles it's known as the historicizing of "myth". So, is Mark recounting Jesus' literal, actual career of doing good, as he catalogs his deeds from chapter 4 verse 35 through chapter 8 verse 10? Well, let's take a look. In the cycle of stories that occurs in those chapters, Jesus performs the following deeds:

He calms the sea
He casts out an unclean spirit
He heals some diseases, in fact, many diseases
He raises a dead person
He feeds a bunch of people
He walks on water
He heals more people
He casts out more demons
He feeds a bunch more people

Mark, as any good biographer would, reports these wonderful events just as they happened, right? Or, does he, as a good first century religious person, write a cycle of stories based on the sacred literature of his tradition that he places into his contemporary milieu? Well, we've already seen that he's drawing from well-known, well-loved, and well-memorized passages from the book of Isaiah. In fact, he's shown us that his entire Gospel is framed around the Isaiah chapter 64 plea to "rend the heavens and come down", that YHWH would come down and rescue his people. Should we be surprised that the macabre and, let's be honest, goofy story of the naked Demoniac in the unbelieving province of Garasa, is actually taken from the very next chapter in Isaiah, chapter 65? There YHWH says he permitted himself to be found "by those who do not seek" Him, a people who "sit among graves (or tombs) and spend the night in secret places, who eat swine's flesh, who say 'Keep to yourself, do not come near me!'" Sounds familiar-- isn't this just a description of the Demoniac? He lived "on the other side", in the Gentile (unbelieving) region. He was "a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit". He would gash himself with stones, which is similar to the idolatrous practices of the Canaanite prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:28). As Jesus approaches, he implores him not to come near him. Then, of course, comes the bit about casting the demon into the pigs, or shall we say the "swine's flesh", which is somewhat puzzling if you take this to be a literal, historical, biographical account, rather than what it apparently is, which is a re-write of Isaiah 65. But, beyond this episode, the entire sequence of miracle stories from Mark chapter 4 through chapter 8 can already be accounted for by looking at Psalm 107, which recounts the deeds and benefits of YHWH. Here's a summary of the Lord's works throughout the history of Israel as presented in Psalm 107, which is, as we know, what Jesus is recapitulating in his ministry:

They were hungry, but he fed them (see the miracles of feeding)

They cried to the Lord, but he rescued them (see the calming of the sea)
He satisfied the hungry and thirsty (notice that this is repeated, just as you get two miracles of feeding)
There were prisoners in chains because of rebellion, but he saved them (see the Demoniac, who is chained up)
He brought them out of death (see the miracle of raising the dead)
Those who do business on ships were troubled by storms, but he calmed the sea (see the miracle of calming the sea)

In the "biography" of Jesus, we can scarcely find a single episode, even a single deed that has not already been written about in the Old Testament. For many who are unacquainted with this fact, the catalog of Jesus' deeds appears to be a form of reportage, like you might find in a contemporary biography, which recounts with as much accuracy as possible the events of a person's life and career (unless of course you're talking about memoirs of a person who has it in their best interests to falsify their reporting--I'm looking at you, Sarah Palin). Here, in the case of Jesus, I haven't even scratched the surface with respect to the allusions and re-writes of the Old Testament that the Gospel authors are engaged in. Which leaves us with only two options--either Jesus literally re-lived the entire history of Israel, actually living out a re-enactment of the favorite Old Testament passages of first century Jews, sometimes with comic literalism (for instance, as Matthew has Jesus actually ride two donkeys because of his failure to account for the Hebrew poetic device of repetition), or, and this is a huge or--or, the Gospels are not, in any meaningful sense, biographical. They are not reporting historical events. They are not taken from "eyewitness accounts" of anything other that the eyewitness of the texts and stories of the Old Testament.

The first century, and the centuries between the close of the Old Testament canon and the open of the New Testament, are bursting with examples of religious authors who re-cast some of the favorite passages and stories of their religious tradition into a quasi-historicized re-telling of those stories in their contemporary setting. The time that has elapsed between them and us makes it impossible to question whether or not they actually believed what they were writing, and frankly the point is moot. It doesn't matter whether or not the author of the Book of Enoch actually believed that he was Enoch, somehow reincarnated into the first century before Christ. The fact is, he wrote as though he was, and his writing was very, very popular, and is even quoted in our New Testament. Given the fact that this genre of writing wasn't obscure or mistrusted, but was pervasive and popular, it should come as no surprise that what we know of as our Gospels are just extensions of this tradition of re-casting Old Testament gems into contemporary, first century settings. Given this, it is impossible to talk about first century religious "biographies" of anyone, especially a biography of a person believed by many of the devotees of this kind of literature to be not only the long-awaited, end times Messiah, but the incarnation of YHWH nonetheless (as the "rending of the heavens" in Mark makes plain). The sheer pervasiveness of the literature that re-writes the Old Testament as though it were happening in the writer's own generation practically demands that the Jesus story be anything but historical or literal.

The question for us is--do you take this genre of literature seriously? Given the fact that there's nothing in the career of Jesus that isn't a re-write of the Old Testament--are you able to say that this accords with literal, historical events? Or, is it, like hundreds of other, similar pieces of Jewish writing, to be classified as Pseudepigraphical, quaint, perhaps instructive, but ultimately no more than pious fiction? The decision to make this classification is easy when it comes to the "Book of Enoch" or the "Testament of Levi" and so many other works of fiction from the centuries immediately preceding the advent of Christ. The question, I suppose, is, do you trust that the same communities that brought you those fictions, which re-cast the Old Testament into their contemporary setting, were not merely exercising the same creativity by re-writing the history of Israel in a character that they called "Jesus". Perhaps, however, the name of this character ought to be rendered more accurately as a Hebraic name, which of course is based on the Anointed Leader who brought the people of God into the Promised Land, and we should call him "Joshua".

In a later Daily Brood, we can revisit this Joshua character, and survey the literature from the Dead Sea Scrolls, written a generation or so before the advent of the man we know as Jesus, but who we should refer to as "Joshua". In the Dead Sea Scrolls, you meet a Messiah, born a century before Jesus/Joshua, who also was the Divine son of YHWH, who also was a Teacher of Righteousness, who also had a career of doing good, whose life story was also crafted around the Book of Isaiah and the Psalms, who also was betrayed, who was executed, and who was exalted to sit in the Heavens, and who was expected to come again in Judgment. For now, given the fact that this literature is not uncommon, or that the Jesus that we know was not even the first end-times Joshua to come to earth as the incarnation of YHWH, rejected by Israel. For now, I'll leave you to do what this article is intended to have you do. To absorb these ideas, and to brood.

Let’s assume there is a “God” - with a capital “G”. Let's assume that, like any good person of faith, you believe that God created the world and everything in it. Now, take a really good look at the world around you. What does it tell you about your God?

Do you truly believe a supreme being full of love built it? Look at the way life is organized on this planet. Watch the evening news. Check out the latest offering on Animal Planet. Stop in at the natural history museum. Your loving and compassionate Father cooked up a Garden of Eden based on murder!

Let's assume that all the problems mankind is plagued with has been brought onto us by our bad behavior in some biblical past. Let's assume we're paying today for something humans did or didn't do in the past. Fine. But what about the rest of the creation?

What did squirrels, elephants and baby antelopes, some of them I've seen being eaten alive by baboons on some BBC documentaries, have done to deserve the multitude or horrible things happening to them?

For billions of years before man appeared on this planet animals have been basically doing mainly two things:

a) Trying to kill another creature to get the protein in its body and to mate with its females;

b) Trying to escape being killed by another creature that wants their protein or their females or trying to escape being killed by another male of its own species.

What a life!

Your loving God one day got up and said to Himself: “Let’s create life on planet earth! I’m going to have a world in which creatures will have to spend their lives killing or trying to escape being killed. Oh, and just for fun, let's make sure those brutal deaths are rarely quick and painless. Let's drag them out and crank up the agony-meter. It’s going to be a world in which species will be perpetually at war with each other.”

Think about that. Satan himself could not have conceived of something worse! Short of a world in which everybody is tied to a stake, being tortured with fire, what’s worse than a world perpetually in agonizing war? A one in which you need to kill other creatures in order to find nutrients for you body? I'm supposed to believe a loving God design that?

It’s a fact that nobody with a brain can deny. Complex animal life was here hundreds of millions of years before man appeared. For countless eons before we arrived, animals have been murdering each other on this planet with no human to witness it and get any kind of “lesson” from it. So the argument that suffering was created to make man think about his morality and his behavior just doesn’t hold. If man was not here to learn something from watching dinosaurs kill each other for hundreds of millions of years, then what was the senseless killing for? Was it so these behemoths with brains the size of a kiwi could appreciate life and ponder about it and improve their manners?

I also do have a bit of a problem with the mind of an all-knowing, all-powerful Creator being entertained by wormy, invertebrate life at the bottom of the oceans for hundred of millions of years, then creating only moderately more interesting animal life forms for another few hundreds of millions of years and finally one day saying, “I am sooo bored. I think I'll whip up something with arms and legs and a heart and a conscience and - guess what.....just for fun, he’s going to be sooo screwed up! He'll be able to love and learn and strive for worth and nobility, but I'll make sure to shower him with disease and agony and war and failure and heartbreak and unbearable loss. Now that should be worth watching for another few millions of years!”

Let's put God's planning process in earthly terms. Imagine a huge lab; say a generous portion of Nevada. We'll give it to brilliant, caring scientists where they can create life from scratch with full control of everything. In that lab they will be the creating gods. Do you honestly believe that any of these Nobel Laureates would intentionally shape a world where their creations are going to have to fight, maim and kill each other to stay alive? Only psychos would do that. I think these nice people would create a world in which all creatures derive all the nutrients they need from something totally benign -- sunlight perhaps. They won’t need predators anymore to control herbivores. The number of creatures would be controlled naturally to avoid overpopulation. They'd have hormones and pheromones to naturally control reproduction when their numbers are above or below a certain threshold. Our new creatures wouldn’t be able to reproduce if there were too many of them because of sets of genes that would be turned off and wouldn’t drive them to procreate. But they’d still be able to mate, because we’d make mating so good, but most of the time they’d be shooting blanks. Every creature will die naturally of peaceful old age and they will all go to heaven. We could do that if we want to because we’re gods.

But apparently that’s not the world that your God had in mind for you. You live in a world that a sadistic maniac would have built. A world of perpetual fighting and misery. And what if I don’t want to fight and kill? Does that mean I won't develop and thrive...or even survive...because I won't harm my fellow creatures? That sounds to me like the games Nazis used to play with people in concentration camps. You want to stay alive, sure, here’s my gun with only one bullet. You can kill yourself or kill either your son or your father. If you kill one of them, you’ll live. But you must kill. Wow!

God maybe wants to [...] make us appreciate life and what we have by making us aware that we will be sick, old, in pain, sightless, etc. (and oh, what a long list it is). But what’s the point in having raccoons or lions or ospreys go through the same ordeal? Do you really believe that they’ll get a lesson out of that? A lesson that other critters can learn? God also decided that for all creatures, man and beast, life would be short and brutal. Over time, life got a little longer and a little less brutal because of science, not because of God. And God lovingly deemed that we’ll have cancer, and we’ll feel horrible pain, both physical and emotional. After the joy of sex, most females will give birth in pain, and to be able to know the joy of sex, males of all species will have to compete against each other to access the females. That’s right. If you want to mate, you have first have to “win out” against your brother. That's still how it works in the animal kingdom and the human system is only a slightly more civilized version.

Sometimes a child will be born with some horrible deformity! And sometimes animal mothers will see their babies eaten alive by predators (sometimes males of their own species!) who are actually waiting for the chance! And before we die, all of us in the broad animal kingdom, we will become old and ugly and very weak. We have been given the wonderful gift of genes that make us lose our teeth, our eyesight, our mobility, our hearing, and our minds. “Ahh, yes,” muses our loving God, “it’s going to be so entertaining. And, so they can properly thank me for that world of horror I've given them... and to really mess up their brains... I’m going to demand that they love me, and, fools that they are, some actually will!”

I could maybe, in one of my worst, depressed, darkest days, in which my brain lacks sleep, oxygen and nutrients, actually guess at the holy reasoning behind this insanity. Of course! God maybe wants to make a world of ordeal for humans in order to reward them. Sure, why not! Let’s make us appreciate life and what we have by making us aware that we will be sick, old, in pain, sightless, etc. (and oh, what a long list it is). Fine. But what’s the point in having raccoons or lions or ospreys go through the same ordeal? Do you really believe that they’ll get a lesson out of that? A lesson that other critters can learn? Do you really believe that a blind opossum is actually learning a lesson from being blind and that he enjoys life more because of that infirmity before being killed by a fox? What exactly is the point of creating elephants that will lose their teeth and take months to starve and be eaten alive by lions as they fall exhausted into the mud? Who’s getting a lesson out of this, the lion or the elephant...or the bacteria decomposing the elephant?

Finally, what crime did mankind commit in a distant past to deserve such punishment?

What did we do? Did we kill another brother species? Did we try to kill God? It's nonsense, we couldn't kill a God? What did we do to deserve the world we have today?

Your God is either incompetent, in which case he wouldn’t have been able to create the universe, which means he’s a figment of your tired imagination, or if he exists...he’s completely psychotic. We’d be better off without HIM. If there is really a supreme being behind the world we’re looking at, we’re truly up shit creek!

It may seem like not enough time, but think of it more as a trailer for your full length story and feel free to include an annotation linking to the full story.

STEP 1. Make a video telling the world you de-conversion story. Videos must be 30 seconds (give or take a few seconds).

STEP 2. Go to this link on YouTube to upload your video as a "Video Response" to the 30 sec. De-conversion video. (You can log in or register on that page if necessary.) Please put the URL http://www.30secdeconversion.com somewhere in the text description when you upload your video.

Below is my most recent letter-to-the-editor offering to a local weekly newspaper. In the 3rd and 4th paragraphs I talk about the extreme editing of an earlier letter of mine. Both letters were sent to the same newspaper, and, amazingly, the letter below was published intact, with no edits!

I did get an e-mail from the editor claiming his earlier edits were not related to the subject matter, and suggesting that I wrote just to piss people off. Of course I responded in my defense. As this exchange was taking place, I knew the paper had already been printed, but I hadn't seen it yet. Imagine my surprise when I saw what he had printed. Of course, I'm lucky, I live in Maine, well away from the Bible belt.
To the Editor:

The current flap over the National Day of Prayer court case has brought to light a concern which deserves a great deal more newsprint than it gets. It should be obvious now that religion is granted a privileged and protected place in our society and that the danger of this situation is grossly underestimated.

Religion is so privileged in this country that our currency sports the motto, “In God We Trust,” and our Pledge of Allegiance contains the words, “One nation under God.” In fact, it often seems that it doesn’t matter to folks which god we worship, so long as it’s one of them.

Media censorship of anti-religious opinion is another example of the privileged position of religion. I witnessed this myself only recently when I submitted a letter-to-the-editor to a newspaper and saw it published in an emasculated form. I had quoted real people who had been psychologically damaged by the teachings of hell, in order to make a point. Those quotes, all of them, were edited out of the published letter. Apparently the medicine was too strong. It might disturb someone’s comfort. If I had quoted political opinion or statements representing one school of economics or another, I think it very unlikely that those quotes would have been removed. Only religion gets this kind of privileged, hands-off treatment.

What is the danger of religious privilege? Consider this. There are large, active Christian sects today which teach that prayer is the proper treatment for illness, not medicine. There is another sect which commands its members to refuse blood transfusions under any and all circumstances. These teachings have been responsible for many deaths, including the deaths of children. There is considerable scientific evidence which counters these teachings (which are attributed to the Bible), yet you will see little discussion of these matters in public forums because it is considered somehow impolite to question people’s religious beliefs in public. People sometimes die from these teachings, but religion is privileged. Some states even have laws absolving parents from legal responsibility for the deaths of their children caused by these beliefs.

What is the danger of religious privilege? The Ryan Report (May 20, 2009) on child abuse by Catholic institutions in Ireland is another first-class example. According to the Ryan Report, because of the power and prestige of the Catholic Church in Ireland, whenever child abuse was reported to Catholic authorities, it was covered up, from the public and the law. In fact, in many cases, when people brought abuses to the attention of police, the police considered it a church matter and passed the allegations on to church authorities as opposed to investigating themselves. The national Department of Education was also condemned in the report for abdicating its responsibilities to the children involved, which it did in deference to the church.

These cover-ups, which have happened repeatedly in our country as well, occurred because the churches are seen as more important than people. Clearly, when the religious dogma is considered sacrosanct, morality gets twisted to serve the dogma. The individual abused child becomes “collateral damage,” a regrettable, but secondary concern. The reputation and survival of the religion always come first.

The clear and present danger here is that if we cannot pull religion down off its pedestal of privilege and challenge the churches publicly to prove the worth and “truth” of their dogmas, then we the people will continue to suffer the consequences – especially the children, who are nearly always powerless to reject, or even question, the religion of their parents.

I had the great fortune of receiving a surprise visit from one of my very best friends just yesterday. As she was en route to another country, her connecting flight was rescheduled to come through my city forcing her to have a 5-hour layover here. What a treat!

Her visit gave me the opportunity to talk to her about something that had been on my mind for quite some time. You see, when she called me a few months back to tell me that she'd be leaving the country for about a year, she began to confide in me that she had begun to lose faith in Christianity. I was the person she most wanted to talk to about how she'd been feeling recently for two main reasons; one being that I am generally a good listener, and two because it was I who led her to Christ in the first place.

As she poured out her innermost feelings to me, she confessed that since becoming a Christian she found herself being judgmental of others and in a constant competition to outperform other Christians in an effort to show god how sincere she is. Though she was giving her all to god, she could not help but be disgusted with herself and her "sinful nature." She was desperate for god to answer her prayer to make her into the woman he wanted her to be. Thus, when she ultimately failed at being perfect, she became depressed and started hating herself. She led praise and worship, attended Bible study weekly, sang in the choir, prayed daily, and abstained from sexual activity. Yet, her life was less fulfilling and she began to become very depressed.

"Am I making any sense?" she asked me.

"Yes, totally," I responded.

I didn't say much else during that phone call. I just let her talk. She needed to speak to someone who wasn't going to tell her to pray harder, or that she wasn't seeking god correctly, or that the lord works in mysterious ways. She didn't need to hear any of the regular bullshit that Christians always say. What she needed was a friend --- someone who would just shut up and listen. I am so glad that I was able to be there for her now because there was a time when I, too, would have simply recited the trite banalities so commonly spoken in the Christian circles. Or, I would have turned her over to the lord in prayer for not knowing what else to do or say.

Of course, that does not mean that I didn't want to say more. I wanted to tell her how sorry I am for ever leading her into that hateful religion. I wanted to confess that I had already been down the road she was on and had left Christianity behind years ago. I wanted her to know that she is truly one of the best people I have ever known and that she deserved a god who was actually worthy of her devotion (though, I doubt highly that one exists). There was so much I wanted to tell her, but the timing just didn't feel right. That conversation was her time to talk and my time to listen. I had to wait for my opportunity.

Well, I finally got my opportunity yesterday. We talked about how much we've both grown and changed over the years, while the essence of who we are has remained the same. We reminisced over past events and memories, both happy and shameful. And we pondered the possibilities that will exist for us in the future. We both exhaled and wiped the sweat off of our foreheads that had accumulated as a result of the stress religion had caused us. Most importantly, we shared the silence that is only comfortable between two friends who understand each other so well that not much has to be said.

I feel closer to my friend now than I ever have before. Now that the buffer of religion that was always between us is gone, we can relate to each other in a more authentic way. You see, when I was a Christian my guard was always up around her because I always felt the pressure of setting a good example for her to follow being that she was a heathen and all. Then, she became a Christian as my faith was dwindling, but I couldn't tell her my faith was dwindling because I felt responsible for her conversion and was still confused about what I believed for myself. Now, we've both renounced our faith in Christ and breathe more easily knowing that this life is most likely the only one we'll ever live. So, we live.

We live with a common bond of a shared history and the love that only time can prove. After over ten years of friendship, we are finally comfortable in our own skin. It's nice having someone who understands you without judging, who supports you without demanding anything, and who loves you for who you are. I can say with total honesty that, in my experience, my BFF is a better friend to me than my old imaginary friend Jesus ever was.

I know this may sound like a Fundie for Evolution and may sound like a statement in reverse of those Fundamngelicals who say, “Look around. How can you say there is no God?” However, I say to Creationists, “Look around. How can you say we are not related to other animals?” Even as a child, I also could not understand how Christians or even other Abrahamic religions can say that “God put animals here for us to use [as food or whatever else they come up with].” Using other animals as a sacrifice for anything or even as food has always been abhorrent to me. To me, such statements are like a form of slavery. None of their statements about other animals have ever made sense to me.

Since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, almost literally given I have always been of small stature, I saw that animals looked like us, only with more fur. I was maybe five when I saw this, but it has been a lifelong thought that my Fundamngelical relatives have never been able to mentally beat out of me. I was a Darwinian even before I knew who Darwin was. I used my skills of observation to come to the conclusion that we are related to other animals. I guess I have always had a scientific mind and in most recent years, I was astounded when my Fundie aunt said, “I don’t know how scientists get their ideas. It’s not in the Bible.”

Well, first off, the Bible was written and inspired by humans, not by some deity. It is very errant and hardly scientific. The god they worship is nothing more than a human creation, which was created for various reasons, even insecurities some humans have about life and death. So we can basically throw that primitive non-scientific book out when it comes to how the world and the creatures on it were created.

Secondly, I noticed at a very young age, probably just before Kindergarten, when my dog Satan was born, that mammals have their offspring just like humans. My mother was present at the time and it was a few years before she was “born again” for the first time. So, I had the knowledge of childbirth long before most children, especially those who do not live on a farm and/or do not have pets.

Thirdly, my child-like mind could not let go of the fact that other apes have five fingers and five toes just like we do and they almost function as we human apes do. The only exception is that they have more hair.

Fourth, again using my child-like mind, cats and dogs have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, five “fingers” (there’s a fifth digit, higher up on each of the front paws, in which the precocious child that I was could easily label a “thumb”), and a brain like ours. Not to mention, they have primitive feelings, just as we do. They show affection and even know when their human needs to be comforted. In times of extreme distress, if one is attuned to their pets, they can have extreme numinous feelings when they look into the eyes of their pet that is trying to comfort them. They can feel as one with their pet, which is a feeling many Christians do not seem to comprehend. They slough off such things like they are of no importance, but I beg to differ. These transcendent feelings are highly important, especially if one values nature.

As I matured and became more learned about Evolution, I found that one can put one mammalian embryo in its very early stages beside a human embryo and see there is no difference between the two. The two embryos look almost if not completely indistinguishable. A cat or dog in the early part of the first trimester looks very much like a human. If you take a dolphin embryo, you will see virtually no difference in the two. Sometimes the back “leg” stubs do not disappear and you see potential back limbs after they are born, but even if they do shed the back limbs, there is skeletal evidence of these “leg” stubs still remaining and no they are not some weird thing Creationists may attribute the stubs to in their bizarre account of creation.

These Evolutionary findings tell me that we are more alike than unalike and very much related to other animals. We are animals and very much connected to other animals on this earth, as well as the earth. We mammals all have a common ancestor way back there somewhere.

How can Fundamngelicals not see that we are most definitely a part of nature and not apart from it? We are born, we live, and we die, only to return back to the earth again, giving back the sustenance that the earth needs to continue to thrive, just as other animals do. This is something that even the Buddha supposedly observed.

That covers some of the scientific part, but what about a soul? What is that? This is something I have always wondered about, even as a child. Is it that spark of life we see in each others eyes? If so, animals have that too and I saw it many years ago as a child, but Christians tried to insist that animals do not have souls. Thus, I seriously doubt we were talking about the same thing, no matter how I tried to explain it when I was a young child. Dead animals/people do not have that spark of life in their eyes. To be honest, I have no clue as to what the word “soul” means, unless it means “an individual”, “a single entity”, or “a person”, which, in my opinion, is also another animal. There is nothing there when one dies, but I do not believe Christians and I are talking about the same thing when I say I looked into the eyes of my beloved pet and saw either life or no life.

Instead, what I was seeing, as a child, when one of my pets died was a lack of neurons that animated a being that was once alive and I could feel there was nothing there, as a child, which gave me that feeling of life within my pet. There was still a numinous connection to my pet, but there was no life within my pet. The neurons that gave my pet life had ceased to function. However, as a child, I did not know anything about neurons, just that their brain had cease to function and that their bodies were beginning the process of returning to the earth, via decaying. That much I knew.

“Remember you are dust and dust you shall return.” This statement is not only heard during Ash Wednesday at the point of the Imposition of Ashes on the forehead, but it is also found in Genesis 3:19. I will meet the Fundamngelicals halfway and use the NKJV:

“In the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”

The Old Jews had that much right when they rewrote the Babylonian and other stories in the surrounding area to fit their culture. I still cannot get away from science, concerning this matter, and to me observation alone tells us that we rot and decay back into the earth, so this idea was not beyond the very early Jewish writers, who, by the way, did not actually discuss issues of an afterlife until much later in the Bible- the Christian Bible that is.

Secondly, I am not a dualist. You cannot separate the brain from the body or vice versa short of chopping off one’s head. If one is sick of mind, their body generally follows and vice versa. The mind and body are not two distinct entities, but rather one. So, again, what is a soul?

These Evolutionary findings tell me that we are more alike than unalike and very much related to other animals. We are animals and very much connected to other animals on this earth, as well as the earth. We mammals all have a common ancestor way back there somewhere.This brings us to questions of sentience. Are other animals self-aware? I would argue they are, because they sometimes fear for their lives and even fight to protect themselves and their offspring. The only thing barring them from fighting humans is that we have the better weapons and humans have been the enemy of even lions. Elephants have no natural enemy, except humans and death. They have the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant#Self-awareness ). They mourn when they see a loved one has died, even stand over them for days, keeping watch, hoping they will recover and not die. Not to mention, even Jane Goodall (http://www.janegoodall.org/ ) has mentioned symptoms which would signify mental illness, even within the chimpanzee tribe, in at least one of her great apes in one of her videos. Chimpanzees fear humans more than anything else because we kill them and for what? To use their hands as ashtrays? How repulsive! It is more repulsive than a room full of men smoking cheap cigars during a poker game and I am, sad to say, a smoker myself. However, none of this explains what a soul is, but the information we have on other animals, especially chimps, dolphins, and elephants, shows they have the ability to recognize themselves, empathize, even have a good laugh, among other emotions. So, we know at least some animals have mirror neurons.

Are other animals intelligent? Depends on how one defines intelligence. If one defines it as the ability to read and write, then humans are still sorely lacking in this area, because surprisingly, there are humans who cannot read and write in the twenty-first century. If we define intelligence as a means to adapt and even conquer our environment, then other animals might be more intelligent than we are, even with their primitive tools and survival skills. How many humans can honestly say that they could actually survive out in the wild? Build a home out of the resources around them? Taking leaves and building a home in a tree might not be so easy for a human, but for another ape, it is old hat. What about the use of primitive tools to dig up food? Some ignorant humans might say it is easy, but once they attempt it, they might find it is harder than it looks, because even the most skilled Bonobo can make fishing termites out of a hole in a tree with a stick look easy. Yet these animals know they must eat in order to survive.

Does the ability to communicate make us more intelligent? Sorry to say that most animals have their own form of communication, be it vocal sounds or body language, so I do not believe that counts as a form of intelligence. Even we humans use vocal sounds and body language to communicate, just as other animals do. Add to that, Chimps and Gorillas, namely Koko, have learned ASL and have taught it to other apes. So they do have the ability to learn at least sign language and even teach it to others. Sign language is just for starters among other apes. Some have learned the concept of numbers and numerical sequences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Intelligence ), so they are not exactly dumb, but again none of this answers anything about a soul.

Is it the superstitious belief in a god? I have heard that is what distinguishes us from other animals, but somehow I doubt that, because I have seen animals run in fear concerning something they have no understanding of or even its origins. Others, even within the same species are curious and seem almost scientifically minded with their query, which makes me wonder if some primitive humanoids behaved similarly in their search for answers. Besides, humans were once so gullible to think that cats were gods. Of course, I would dare say that some pets may think that their humans are gods. Who knows, but we cannot make such a blanket statement as that because superstition is a primitive thought, emotion, and a reaction to the unknown. So, who is to say the brains of other animals do not come up with something almost as preposterous as a man in the sky watching down on the earth?

Other animals’ brains are elaborate machines, just as ours are and I have mentioned they have remarkable capabilities just as we humans do. The brains of animals, including humans, operate with neuro-chemicals and once those chemicals are depleted there is no life. Like a computer without electricity, we shut down, forever. The only difference between all animals and a computer is that we are bio-degradable. That is, we become plant food very easily because we are part of everything found in the earth and we return the nourishment we took from the earth upon our death. The earth is a remarkable eco-system, to say the least, and I would not be so quick to say the earth itself is not alive. It just might be for all I know, especially when I look at it and see life springing from it everywhere, including us humans who came from the earth.

Genetically the Bonobo is 98% like us humans and a pig has just as many similar DNA qualities to humans. We are all basically the same when it comes to DNA, whether one agrees about the emotions we humans may share with other species. Genetically, we humans are no different from other animals, so one would have to be totally ignorant or in complete denial of science to believe that other animals are not like us, regardless if they desire to push aside observational similarities. We share a common ancestor with other apes, but we did NOT evolve from monkeys. There is a vast difference is that statement.

So, just what are other animals? Excuse me while my Star Trek imagination side of my brain intervenes a bit here, because I cannot resist referring to Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man” at this point.

Picard: "Commander Riker has dramatically demonstrated to this court that Lieutenant Commander Data is a machine. Do we deny that? No, because it is not relevant – we too are machines, just machines of a different type. Commander Riker has also reminded us that Lieutenant Commander Data was created by a human; do we deny that? No. Again it is not relevant. Children are created from the 'building blocks' of their parents' DNA. Are they property?"

I do not consider my pets property, but rather part of my family. I take care of them and nurture them, almost like I do my children, and in return, I gain their trust, love, and even nurturing in return. No animal, human or otherwise, is property and to call other animals property is a form of slavery, in my opinion. Any abused pet, if given the opportunity, would find a means to escape his/her abuser or if a kind human, such as an employee or volunteer of the ASPCA, comes along to rescue them and there is even an ounce of trust left within them towards humans, s/he will freely chose to go with those humans. Other animals are not stupid and like us, they were created by their parents, maybe with a few improvements in their DNA.

Bruce Maddox: "You are imparting Human qualities to it because it looks Human – but I assure you: it is not. If it were a box on wheels I would not be facing this opposition."

I am sure there are many humans saying similar to this to me right now, even some atheists, and I would agree, other animals are not human due to a slight variance in genetic coding. Their species is somewhat different from the human specie, but that is what makes them the species they are, rather than human, but for a moment, let us imagine Koko, the Gorilla, is sitting before us and we are deciding if she is sentient and entitled to the same basic rights as humans- clean water, food, shelter, medical care, love, safety, and well-being, as well as freedom from abuse and extinction in place of an education a human is capable of getting.

Picard: “But he's met two of your three criteria for sentience, and we haven't addressed the third. So we might find him meeting your third criterion, and then what is he?”

I propose that other animals are not only similar to us physically, but are also just as sentient as we are. Their sentience is just different and they have the same basic rights as we human animals do- the right to clean water, food, health care, shelter, and although they cannot be educated like the human specie, they have the right of freedom from abuse and being hunted to extinction.

Lastly, however one may think of other animals, I say Evolution and science as a whole, has the best answer to our origins. Evolution is a far better explanation than the Bible or the ignorant responses of silly Creationists.

Phillipa: "It sits there looking at me, and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent, nor qualified, to answer those. I've got to make a ruling – to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We've all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have! But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose."

The Catholic Church, as well as some other churches, do accept Evolution and the Big Bang theory, but they include a “God of the Gaps”, saying “That’s how God did it”. Well no, that is just filling in answers to questions we do not yet have the answers to and if they could just accept an answer of “We don’t know” to the questions yet unanswered, they would be far better off than having a “God of the Gaps” answer. However, I will give them some credit for being more scientifically literate than their Creationist counterparts, but I study Evolution and say, “That’s why we look like other animals” and I think that is a far better response than “That’s how God did it”. As for having a soul, I will put in the words of Phillipa, “I don’t know that I have!” I don’t know that anyone has a soul, much less what it is.

The fact is, if we observe other animals, both physically and behaviourally, we find that we are more alike than unalike. Once we throw in science we find even more evidence that we are more alike than unalike and even originated from a common ancestor. The fact of the matter is other apes are our cousins and even more distantly related are other mammals. It would really behove Fundamngelicals to become scientifically literate rather than use pseudo-science in which to attempt to justify their fairy tale book, which is hardly scientific in any sense of the word. Sorry, but a bat is not a bird. *Fundamngelical aunt shoot me dirty look here.* Rather it is a mammal and you will not find that in your book nor can you justify such primitive thought with various excuses. The Bible was written by ignorant primitive humans, who knew nothing about science or their relationship to nature. Creationism is bullcrap, even to a precocious young mind who can see that we are related to other animals based on observation alone. It is as obvious as our two hands and no Fundamngelical Creationist has been able to convince me differently. In fact, Darwin seemed to agree with me and none of the scientific evidence has yet contradicted those findings, not even my own.

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